Hi Birders
This week we only had 7 people for the count, which meant only two cars, so to give him some experience of being in close quarters within the ladies car Barry was dispatched to the back seat. He seemed to come out of it pretty well unscathed although his photography payed a heavy price with no pictures this week.
As we were about to leave a man drove in and leaped out of his truck and asked if we were birders, it appears that he had just seen a Northern Hawk Owl, he gave me excellent details of who he had phoned and his prowess of identifying owls, the location was given and so we headed off knowing only too well that we would get side tracked once again this week.
We worked our way along Somenos Marsh but sadly not many birds were evident, after this we made this sudden detour to look for the owl, we checked the area but nothing was found, a couple of the ladies also checked again at the end of the count with no luck. So who knows?
This week saw an upturn in the Bald Eagles and I wonder if they knew that there could be some early salmon coming in.
We hit Somenos Lake and saw nothing big and white, a few Canada Geese were added and the star of the show was a seal that had worked it’s way up Somenos Creek and was enjoying the spoils of the lake. This is not the first time seals have been seen up in the lake, but it is always a nice surprise when we see one. The White-throated Sparrow was not seen but I have added a picture taken by our good friend Ann Nightingale who added it to her big year list on Tuesday. Ann is trying this year to see as many birds as possible on Vancouver Island an enviable task.
Our next stop was the exhibition grounds where the American Kestrel has been holed up for a couple of weeks or more, well after causing some chaos with big rigs and other motorists with less understanding natures, we finally saw this little beauty on the fence line. An early in the week picture is attached taken by Kurlene, I think you’ll like this one.
Most of all the swans had departed the north end of our count with just 30 birds found up on Hwy 18 along with 5 Greater White-fronted Geese and over 200 Canada Geese. I am not inferring that the swans have headed north in fact they were moving further south in the valley for greener pastures.
After our break we headed off down Sahilton Road but the best we could muster was a family group of 4 immature and 1 adult swan.
We headed over to the west side of town and I was dreading our next stop because it is the hardest place to count swans and as you might have guessed there was a big flock hiding behind the shrubs and trees. I did my best to count them with Dorothy behind me jotting down the numbers and when all was done we had added 131 swans to our meager total.
On we pushed up to Bench Road where there was a good number of swans and the Sandhill Crane, as I started to count I spotted the farmer come our and get in his truck, I’m sure he was watching out for us, I frantically counted the swans before the farmer set about dispersing them far and wide.
I was now concerned that many birds had headed out to locations for which we had not visited yet and there was the chance that they would get counted twice, this came to the fore when we hit Willmot Road where Sandra the Sandhill Crane was standing in the field with many trumpeters.
Along Koksilah Road east a lovely female Northern Harrier glided along beside the car giving us excellent views, but no swans were to be had.
I made an executive decision to count the swans on Willmot Road but not anything on Dinsdales farm on in the south end of Cowichan Bay. As it turned out it seems the numbers were not bad, but these are the perils of counting things with wings that farmers take a dislike to. One good thing was the appearance of an adult Tundra Swan what was nice and close in the field at Willmot. We did count a flock of about 200 Geese on Dinsdales Farm and a few Trumpeters in the bay.
That was it our day was over and for the most part we did manage to dodge the worst of the rain.
Good fun was had by all and until next week keep your bins at the ready.
Derrick